- i, being top soul and all, i can't remember anything. my chief responsibility. so, i wrote what i have to say. good evening panelists, guests, students, and colleagues. sheroes is a followupto a panel discussion that we had a few years ago through vsc called freshly minted.
and, that panel was with vc graduates and it was about how to survive the first few years after school. and, as soon as we finished that panel, i realized how terrific it would be to do something similar, but with people who had survived much, much longer. and, all of the guests here tonight have had a career thatis at least five decades
long in the art world, and i think that is quite an achievement. and, that in itself deservesa huge round of applause. (applause) and you know, there are also, there are lots of older male artists, and of course, an interestingconversation as well, but i wanted to limit this talk to women. and in particular, to the issues
that women have faced over the last 50 years in the art world, what has changed, what has not changed, and hopefully, we'll talk about some of those issues tonight as well. - okay, it's a pleasure for me to be here, especially as i taught here for so long. it's real deja vu for me. i had wonderful time teaching here.
i'm starting with this image, which is a photograph call ellensburg, washington, 1973. i took this photograph to show the scale of my paintings. at the time, all that was available for us to send out images were slides, which are what, two by two inches? so, i though i'll putthis photograph in it,
and then, they can see how big it is. what happened was that people thought i was standing between twovery large photographs, and not two paintings. so, it defeated itspurpose and i was not able to begin to establish the image, which was very important to me, until 2002, when it wasused as my first show of these paintings in new york
at mitchell algus gallery. so the point is, they're big. this is fuck painting number one, which i did in 1969. when i first came to new york, women were not welcomein the gallery system. i had not really realizedthis as a student, because there was enough women artists that i knew of to make me think
that all these teacherswho were telling me that the only way i'd make it in new york would be on my back, for instance, or not to bother. and, why were theyspending any time with me because i was only going to get married and have babies. i just simply didn't believe them. i'm very good at ignoring reality that's
not convenient to me. so, i came to new york and i started going around to the galleries, and they indeed were full of men, and i'm a friendlysort, so i would talk to the dealers, and they would say to me, to a person, come back in 10 years, when you found your own voice. we don't handle artists thisclose to their schooling.
you don't have your own voice. and, about half of them, if not more, said to me, and don't bother to come back. we never show women. my response to this, because it seemed to me you could only haveone of two responses, was you could either bevery emotionally crushed, or you could be totally liberated.
my choice was to be totally liberated. the art world at that time was very small. it was 57th street, between 6th avenue and madison avenue. and, madison avenue going up to allan stone gallery on 86th street, and maybe a half a block off madison in either direction. so you could, on a saturday afternoon,
see everything that was up. and so, i saw everything. and, i though most ofit was really boring, very second-rate. very imitative. i was engaged in very few shows. the shows that i wasengaged with, of course, i was mesmorized with and i would spend a lot, a lot of time.
but, it would bother me that i would go in and out of thesegalleries very quickly, when i knew that the guywho did the paintings, and yes, it was always a guy, had spent up to two years creating this body of work, and i couldn't get my body to stand in the gallery for five minutes to absorb it. i would just walk in and go,
okay, i got it, boring, and walk out. so, what i was looking for, for myself, was a way to approach imagery, because i had worked through abstract expressionism as a student,and in graduate school, came to figuration. i was looking for an imagethat had charge from me. that if i walked into a gallery,
and i saw this painting, i would go, what's going on here? let's look at this. what's happening as a painting in this painting? and one day, i was fooling around with my first husband's porn collection, which he had got illegallythrough the mail. he lived in everett, washington,
and he got a po box in vancouver, bc, because at the time, it was illegal to, to mail porn. you could get arrested for it. so, he had it sent to bc. he waited for what he thought was the appropriate amount of time. and, he drove up there, got the stuff out of the po box,
hid it under the cushions in his car, and went across the border, hoping he looked likethe all american boy, which he did. and so, he had this huge collection. i should add, he was 12years older than i was. so, he had this collection a long time. i was very young. i'm looking at these one day,
and i said, you know, if you take off the heads, the hands, the uninteresting parts, and you're left with a composition that's gorgeous, that i can't imaginemaking a more beautiful abstact composition. and, it also has charge. if i went into a gallery,i would want to look at it. so, this is fuck painting number one.
it's now in the permanent collection of centre pompidou in paris. and, it was also censored for a show that i was supposed to be in in paris in 1973. - [voiceover] how big is it? - this is 84 by 60 inches, as is this. they're almost all arethat i'm showing, actually. this is fuck painting number five.
and, this is the otherpainting that was censored going into paris in 1973. to keep my sanity, here, i didn't know what to do. i'm sincere in my work. i do it honestly. i work really hard. i did a group of censoreddrawings, you know. i can censor me as well as the french.
i can censor me better. so, this is one of the ones that i did where i censored everythingbut the naughty bits. and, here is another that i did, which is a more traditional approach to the idea of censoring an image. and, here's still another,just censor it all. in 2006, i was invited to be in a show, a gallery show, in tokyo.
i had shown with him before, and we had had no problems moving pieces in and out of japan. so, he asked for three works, and he picked three works on paper, and we sent them. and, here they are. this one happens to be a series, this is around 16 by 20 inches,
20 by 16 inches. and, i used to teach an awful lot. when i teach, when i taught, i really wanted my students to work. i didn't want them to have to listen to me for the whole class. i wanted them to take what i considered very limited studio time, and i wanted them to work and not have to listen to me.
so in order not to harassthem, because i like to be doing something all the time, in order not to harass them, i started to do these drawings. and, what i would dois take my source photo and cut it up into sections, and put the sections in an envelope, and i had small sketchbooks, and i would draw out the squares,
which are about four,four-and-a-half inches each. and, i would work on just once section. you can't tell what the whole is looking at just one section. so, i did them while i taught. i did them in faculty meetings. i did them when i wasgetting my hair done. i did them in co-op meetings. i kept myself very actively engaged
by doing these drawings. this is the second onethat i sent to japan, and this is done with stamps on paper, with stamping. and, this was the third. they went over in a fedex box, and the fedex box hadan awfully high value for a small fedex box. and so, the customs inspector
opened it up and he didnot like what he saw, and he immediately put these pieces in art jail. so, we did get them sprung eventually. it was some years later. i knew to contact people to get advice, which i didn't know the first time. i had internet, i had email. i had tools that had not had in 1973.
i was advised to fine sombody to get the pieces, if i could, repatriated, and then, find somebody who was going by commercial airline to tokyo and have them put the envelope, not a box, in the bottomof their suitcase. so i thought, okay, thisis pretty good advice. and, i was starting to work on this when the dealer involved got them
sprung from art jail. it was still, even thoughthey did eventually get up on the wall, it was still a very unnerving experience. so, i did some more censored pieces. this is of the first one on the little pieces of paper. and, this one. same image.
okay, so that's myhistory with censorship. i think, john, i think you've had some experience with censorship also? it's a really disgustingthing to have to undergo. i don't think i'm donewith it in my lifetime. as my work moves around abroad, i'm sure this will come up again. i managed to keep my sanityby doing these drawings. when i came back to the subject
of sex, was in 2003, i didn't want to use the airbrush. all those other paintings i showed you were done with single action airbrush. i wanted to do something different. i didn't quite see the point of just doing what i had done, because i had done it. so, i had this idea toget these stamps made of different words, having to do
with whatever the sex act was or the body part was that, that i was painting. and, to use these. the paintings give theimpression of reading, of language, without you're actually being able to see very much. so, this was one of the, this was an early one.
this was a small one. this was 19 by 17 inches. this one is 84 by 60. i also wanted, when icame back to the subject, the first round had been all straight, heterosexual intercourse. i wanted to broaden the subject out. sex is a big topic. so, i really just wantedto go as deep into it
as i could. so, this is another one. that's my cat emmy she hangs around whenever a camera is out, so we put her in things. and, you can see how large the painting is because, there's emmy. by 2006, i had given myself tendonitis in both forearms from using the stamps.
one, the hand holdingwas as badly affected as the hand pounding, and i was going to physical therapy a couple times a week going, ouch, this really hurts. and then, coming home and picking up the same tools of destruction, and it didn't make any sense. at the same time, istarted to have some dreams
about working with an airbrush again. you know, there's things that i can do our you can do with an airbrush that i have never figuredout how to do any other way. so, i sort of have dreams about it. and i thought, okay. i went down to pearl paint. my old, original airbrush, which i still own,
it had sprung all its springs. i don't know how to fix these things. so, i went down to pearl paint and i bought two new airbrushes. i had originally, i hadworked with one airbrush, so i spent a lot of timecleaning out the airbrush. you know, and it seemed to me that there was a better way to go about it. so, i got two of them and i dedicated
one of them to the white, and i dedicated the otherone to chromatic blacks. i mix my own blacks, which ihadn't done originally either. and, i've developed several combinations to work with them. this was the first paintingi did with the airbrush. it's 24 by 24 inches and basically, i had, since i had no real recollection of how i had done the original paintings,
i had to re-invent whati was doing for myself. and, which was a lot of fun. but basically, what myhands said to my brain was, why don't you go to the bahamas for a few days? you know, let's see ifi know how to do this, even if you don't know how to do it. so, i sent my brain to the bahamas, and i put the airbrush in my hand,
and my hand just got all happy, you know. you an tell when your hand is happy. it just knew what to do. so after a couple of days, you know, my brain said, i getit, i get it, i get it. i'm coming back in, andwe finished this painting. and, my hand and my brain have been very happy with each other ever since, i'm glad to say.
okay, this is, this is again a large painting. this is a 72 by 60 inch painting, and there are twoversions of this painting. one was done with stamps, and it had more foreground, background. one of the things thati pretty consistently do is i flatten out the picture plane. and so, i did this second version.
i hadn't liked the first one. and, it was that first one that had given me the idea that goingback to the airbrush might be a really good thing for me to do. so, i did this painting, and this one, i think is areally beautiful painting and i love what happened with it. the foot was to me justlike a miracle of moments, you know, it basically felloff the airbrush for me.
you don't have that happen too often. this is one of my blow job paintings, which is, it's alwaysan interesting subject because often, there's very high contast, so you can build the composition around the contrast. and, i've also done a groupof pierced cunt paintings. i would really. this painting lives in paris,
and i would like to see it one day, because when i look at images of it, i'm not really sure howi did certain things, and i'm not sure i wouldknow it if i saw it, but i would know more. i find images a poorsubstitute for the real thing. i don't know how any of you feel about it, but this is one of my personal conclusion, or at least for now.
and, i've done also anumber of girl on girl images. they're murderously difficult to work out. this one didn't resolve itselfuntil like the last hour that i was working on it, and then somehow, i gotit to pull together. and, i've done kisses. i really like kisses. my kiss imagery comes from porn.
it doesn't come from the movies, and it's always interesting to me because a porn kiss is trying to show what happens on the inside of our body on the outside. it's trying to make exteriorand interior action. and, i have also goneinto masterbation images. this is one of my favorites. and, if anybody has a lotof foot fetish images,
please email them to me. it's a subject that i really, really like, and i have a hard time finding the images. what i do is, i scan in a lot of images, and i also find them on the internet, and people sometimes do send me things. and, that becomes thebase of a photo file, to which i do a lot of alteration. i crop, flip, rotate.
i've changed body parts out. i have changed genders. i've changed ethnicities. i just, feel everything's up to grabs. when it's an image i feeli have conviction in, that i want to paint, i have this drive to paint this, i print it out and that's the file. i currently right now have this show up,
at flag foundation, which is on 25th street, and it's called womenwords, phrases, and stories. i got the idea for this show, in 2002, i had this moment of feeling lonely in my studio. you know, i'm an artist. i like to be by myself. i can do it forever and ever and ever.
when i went through this period where i thought, hmm, i wonder what's going on out there. and, do i always have to do everything? so, i sent around an email to everybody who was on my email list, and i said i want to doanother series with language. and this time, i wantit to be about women. please send me your wordsand phrases about women.
it can be affectionate, like honey. it can be pejorative, like bitch. if it's not in english, that's great, but i need the translation. thanks very much. i got 1,500 separate,not counting repeats, words and phrases in seven language. and, it took me months to cooridnate them onto an alphabetical list,
and i did a couple of small paintings with them, and then, i dida couple large paintings. and then, i got distracted into doing the paintings with the stamps that i showed you earlier. so, i put the list aside, because once i started with the stamps, nobody was gonna send me these words. i asked like 20, 30 people.
you know, what are your words? what do you call your girlfriend? what do you call yourself? what do you call what you're doing? and, all these guys were saying to me, oh, i'm so on this. i am sending you my list. and then, none of them did. so, when bill and i would be in the car
going to pennsylvania, we would just make up the lists. then, we had to find somebody to make this stamp, whichwas another problem. but at any rate, i had the list. at the end of 2012, i was talking to some art advisors, and they were talking about jason rhodes, and i said, oh, i have some of his words,
because he had done a show, i can't remember the name of the gallery. do you know? he had a big installation of legos in the middle, and he had all these neon words and phrases, which basically were, all cunts phrases on the wall, and so, i just whippedout a piece of paper and i wrote some downon the front and back
of something. and, i added it to my pile, because it was right when i was making my list of words. and so, i took it outand i showed it to them, and i'm looking at it going, hmm. you know, i really have tostart using these words. i have no idea what i'll do, but i have to start painting these.
and, i had some four by four inch canvases left over from a very failed project. so i thought, oh, i'll start with this. so on january 1st, 2013, i did the first one, and it said slut. slut, the four most popular words both times i sent around the email were slut, cunt, bitch, and mother. they were repeated the most.
and so, i started with slut, and i actually usedthat for the first two. when i got to aroundthe seventh or eighth, i thought i needed a goal so i would know when i was done. and also, that a goal would be good so it would keep memoving towards the end. i thought my interestsmight flag at places, which it never did as it turned out.
so, i set a goal of 1,000, because when you're at seven, 1,000 is insane. and, having an insanegoal is really great. you know, it will keep you moving. in 2013, i got curious about whether language had changed, so i sent the email around again. and this time, i promisedeverybody anonymity.
and, people really let loose on the things that they said, because you know, basically, it was nevergonna be attributed to them, and they knew it because i had promised, and i'm a person of my word. so, then i had 3,700 unique words and phrases, plus a lot of repeats. so, i had a lot of material to work with.
flag was really wonderful in supporting this project. they had asked me in 2013 if i would lend them 100, 150 for a summer group show. and, i said no, it would be like asking me to show a painting that was just a quarter of done. but, i want to show all of them
and i'd love to show them at flag. and, if you can see your way clear to it, i think it'd be really terrific. so, they agreed. and, none of use knewwhat it would look like. i did a trial run in december, 2013 of the first couple of hundred. so, i had a vague idea. but, laying out 200, 250 small pieces
is a lot different than laying out 1,000 on three walls. and, when you walk into this room, the mass of the piece,just the shear size of it, is something just to start with. and so, this gives you some idea. it's not all of the all three walls, but it gives you a little bit of an idea. this is one of the closeups of it,
so you can see that i channeled myself in doing this, and i also challenged, channeled jackson pollock, i channeled fontana, morris louis. a bunch of other people. the abstract expressionists, richter. it was a lot of fun to do, to think about the big boys and put these words,
put these words about women onto them. and, so this is, this is one of many,many, many detail shots. that one on the upper right, with her, you never know if you're gonna get a fuck you or a chicken dinner, was actually somethingthat somebody said about me when i was in college.
and, it was true with this particular guy. he got both, and what we did when we were trying, when we were trying tofigure out the layout of this, and this piece came up, the friend who was helping me with this, her name is natasha dembrowsky, and she's really great at language. and, she said, i don't knowwhat to put with this piece.
and i said, put betty. and, so that's what we did. so, it's the insidejoke of the whole thing. i told this story ofthis guy and the fuck you or the chicken dinner to a friend of mine lisa beth, and she said you have to make it as part of your piece, and i said, oh, i can't. the rule of the piece is none
of the words originate with me. they all have to come to me. this is what the world thinks about women. this is not what i think about women. so, she went home and she sent me an email that said this, and then,on the bottom she's saying, now you have to do it, because i've sent it to you. it's legit.
so, i did do it. and, one of the pieces, and one of my favoritepieces in the installation is that one. okay. it's all yours, joan. (laughs)(applause) oh, thank you. this is going to be veryboring in comparision.
(laughing) you're gonna be so bored. oh my god. i've never followed anybody like betty. a little bit overwhelmed. i brought along about 30 different images from really early workto the very present, and just kind of an overview of what's gone for the last,
i don't know, peter said 50 years. has it really been 50 years? it could be. yeah, he's shaking his head. you know, i don't know how to exactly incorporate the dialog we're supposed to be having with my paintings, but somehow, i will, you know, i'll get some ideas,
in about women and the women's movement and what we were facing and what we did, where we are now. i have a really wonderfullucy lippard quote about the present, so i, i'm gonna read that later. anyway, this is a painting i did in 1964. it's a farm landscape and, you know,
i like to show it just because you'll see from where i was coming from, and where i ended up, you know, finally many, many years later. this, you're not seeing the whole scope of my early work, needless to say, but this was like a majorbreakthrough painting for me in 1969 called lines and strokes. and, i finally felt like i was painting
paint strokes and, laying things out very carefully on a grid and, showing different, what i called at the time, the anatomy of a stroke. where you could see in one painting many different layers and levels of, you know, you could see the lines,
the raw canvas, the gesso, the spray, the, um. this is called symphony and, i think this was 1971. i think i've done seven symphonies since. i'm gonna show a few of them, and up to symphony seven, which will be one of the last few slides i show.
squares. none of these seemparticularly in proportion because i put this together myself and didn't really matter. this is actually a square painting. it looks tall and long, but i've been kind of been withoutan assistant for awhile. so, that's what's going on. this is called heart on.
and, its from 1974. the work kind of changeddramatically in 1974, and it was, it was during the time that the dialog was going on among women about female sensibilityand is there such a thing as a female sensibility, and is men's work differentthan women's work, and that sort of dialog.
i made. this is a painting, by theway, that's hanging at the met, and unfinished. it's got lots ofdifferent materials in it. it's got a valentine candy box. it's got cotton batting and thread, and, um, just lots of other material. vanishing theater/the cut.
this had a big, big central image that i cut the canvas, and then, stuffed it and sewed it up. and, it's got fur, a fur. see, i don't like to use the word cunt, that's not my thing. and, when i make these things, i never think of that, actually. believe it or not.
i mean, i'm not thinkingabout things like that. i mean, it's just imagery thatjust comes naturally to me, but i'm not, i don't know. i mean, i'm just, it's not that much part of my vocabulary. this is something i made in 19, oh, my daughter was like about three or four, maybe 1974? oh no, 1984.
and, it's called mommy why? it's a hand painted woodcut. it was done not long afteri had left my husband and was raising a child on my own. - [voiceover] how large is that piece? - it's not large. it's, you know, like maybe, 15 inches by 20 inches, or something.
i made it with a guy named chip elwell, i think was his name. does that ring any bell? anyway, he's a fantastic print maker, and he actually wasone of the first people i knew who died. he got sick and died. he got aids and died. this is called bean fieldwith music for molly.
it's a very large bean field painting. i had stopped makingthose feminist paintings and wanted to go back to the feeling of the stroke paintings, but didn't want to make the stroke paintings again. with my daughter, i movedto eastport, new york, and we lived on a smallfarm and surrounded by bean fields at the time. so, i started making a seriesof bean field paintings.
this being the first one. bean field with snow. moon field. this really is a, most smallerpainting than it looks. it's probably four feetsquare, or something like that. this painting is calledjourney of the souls, and it was done really right in the midst of the aids crisis. and, i made quite a few paintings
on the subject of the time. the faces are made on silk, and they're, i carved wood blocks, and then, printed the pieces of silk. put them in the paintings. bedeckt mich mit blumen, this is a, painting with lots of cloth flowers all over the body, which i found
in a box on canal street at a flea market. and, went home and immediately started making this painting. bedeckt me with flowers,i'm dying of love, was a hugo wolf song. cherry tree. this was the first cherry tree painting, and i made many, many more prints, et ectera,
and this first inspiration for it was a tiny cherry tree full of cherries that i saw on fort hamiltonparkway in brooklyn, which is really, really an ugly street, but i was on my way to visit my father, who was 92 in a nursing home out there, and i saw this littleyard with a cherry tree and i stopped and tooklots of photographs of it. it had cherries on it.
it had cherries falling off of it. it had cherries rotting on the ground. it really did become a metaphor for me about, of life and death. it's got a piece of silk down the center. this is called cherry fall. ah, sunflower, and it has the wholewilliam blake poem on it, of sunflower weary of time.
oratorio. i did this in a really smallstudio in willow, new york, which is outside of woodstock. kind of giving myself aretrospective, if you'll notice. pumpkin fields and, houses, symphonies and squares, and grapes. this one's called andalways searching for beauty.
should you wonder. symphony six. song cycle one for molly. i have some quotes, but i'm gonna read them after i'm done. i have a few things. this is called breakinto my heart so needy, from a bach recorder piece, actually, that i had
sitting around. summer fugue. and, this is one of the paintings that's hanging at the american academy of arts and letters right now. another woodcut, um. i think it's an etching and woodcut, no litho. it's a thoreau quote.
see what a life the gods have given us. set round with pain and pleasure. it is too strange for sorrow, it is too strange for joy. and then, i repeat that again. i love that quote. this is called amor matris. we're getting close to the, this is symphony seven.
rose grid. that's a new painting called prelude yellow field. that's a new one i'm mixing the name up with another one, but i can't think of the name of it. heart of the fugue. and, this is called, this is the last one i think i have,
is called ode to silence. yeah so, the thing i guess that i want to add about, you know, i wrote something in 2009 about, i started writing a whole paper. i'm obviously not gonna read this, but there are a few things in here. trying to think of thewhole male, female thing.
women's shows. should there be women's shows? shouldn't there be women's shows? you know, gender andall this sort of thing. the beginning of this piece, i'd like to just read thebeginning of this piece. and i, you know, iquestion all this myself and i wonder about it, but here was the beginning
of my dialog. maybe the male artists of our generation, and i'm talking about the early 70s, didn't have stories to tell. we had so many stories, and we had dramas we needed to enact. the men were the inheritors of color field, abstract expressionism, minimalism.
we were not. we perhaps had not much to inherit. i don't think we did havemuch to inherit, actually. not only were we reactingagainst the history of contemporary art inthe late 60s, early 70s, but we were also diggingdeeply in another direction, into ourselves. and in this spirit, in this spirit we were forming groups.
political groups, women's consciousness-raising groups, and collectives, so that we and other women from all over theworld would have a forum. our own forum. and really, that's what was happening in the 70s, in the early 70s with the women's art movement. we women were, so it seemed,
on a different track, maybeon a different planet. perhaps, that's why linda nochlin could not find great women artists when she went looking for them. perhaps, they were not to be found, but on a different planet, on woman planet. and so, we decided thecollective unconscious being hard at work, to get together,
to figure out ways to be heard, to show the strong thisstrong and different work, to organize through protest, and continue speaking this new language, our own language. the only other quotethat i would like to read is lucy's quote. and, that'll be my final, if i can find it.
lucy says this in theprologue of her new book. in the first wave offeminism in the united states was the early 20th centurysuffragette movement. the second wave was thewomen's liberation movement in the late 60s. and, where are we now? are we sunken a trough? should we be lookingforward to a third wave? it has been almost 40 years.
dispite cultural amnesia and the fear of erasure common to allprogressive movements, the exuberant optimism of vintage feminist art is attractingmore attention these days. and, i go on to say, i can't say it better than lucy does, and i think as women and women artists, we did it. we'll keep doing it over and over,
just like we do so manyother things over and over, good and bad for us,over and over and over. repetition, as we have seen, being one key to our successful language and, um. i don't really knowthe answer to the whole women's movement at this point or what's happening, or what young women artists want to do,
or will do. i know there's a glass ceiling. i mean, i know that women don't get their due in the art world. i know that the new york art world is probably the most ungenerous place you'll ever want to be. it's just not a good place. it's not a good environment.
and it's gotten worse, i think, because of what's going on, you know, in the business world of the art world and box galleries, and everything else. i think i've been reallylucky in my career. i couldn't ask for more. at this point, i wouldn'task for one more thing. but, i also experienced the glass ceiling. it's very real and it's definitely there.
that's it. i do have to say that henriettais one of my heroines. - [voiceover] thank you, joan. - [voiceover] no, i mean i love henrietta. i love her work. have fun. she's fun. she's great. - well, i went to have my hair done today
in the morning, and so she asked me, i don't mean to steal this from betty, but she said, what did you have done? was it, a blow dry? and, i always get mixed up like that. but, i did pay for what she said, and left. anyway, so i'm walking down broadway
and i'm thinking about women, and what we would talk about today. and then, i walked bythree window displays at victoria's secret, right? now, i'm an old woman. an old painter, right? and so, i say, where'smy place in this world? but, in any case, i seethe victoria's secret, then i go to the next shop,
and there's these six inch heels in colored leather. beautiful. and, i remember how iruined my second toe, years ago by wearing them. any case, so all along the street, things about women, like what women do, what women wear.
and when i got home, ipicked up the newspaper. in there, it was all about men. what they do. what they don't do. what they should do. in any case, to get back to this story. i realized by the time i was eight years old that there was something
wrong with being a girl. first, it was dangerous for one thing. my mother, and this was in like the pre-roosevelt time, when my mother worked six days a week, long hours, and she had to leave us alone. so, she had to give us a lot of warnings. because, she felt bad leaving us. so, she'd say, if you see some big boys
cross the street, don'tsit on anyone's lap, any man's lap, especially family people. if you also, peter, if the tramp comes to the door, give him a cup of water, but don't let him in the house. so, i used to ask myself, would i be a boy if i could? would i change? and i always, i never said this
to anybody else, but i said it to myself over and over, no. i like to be a girl, buti wanted to do things that boys do. well, the first thing i wanted to do that boys do, was in elementary school, i wanted to take shop, because i had this idea i wanna put wheels on a orange crate and make a wagon.
girls could not take shop. we had to take home economics. and, if anybody wants to eat a really good white sauce, i can still do it. let's see, what else was i going to say? oh, okay. so, it took. i think this experience
of not being able to take shop, strangely enough influenced a lot of my artistic life. it took me 30 years to go buy a saber saw. and finally, i went into a hardware store and i bought a saber saw, because i was going to do, i was going to do a, theater stage,
and i wanted to do it withbig pieces of plywood, so i bought four, four by eight pieces of plywood, had someone put them together for me in the theater, and imade an enormous head that i cut out with my new saw, the eyes, nose, and mouth. so, and this was at a theater, it was a neighborhood theater at that time
called circle repertory company, which eventually became very famous. but, there are themusicians playing in the, in the eyes, nose, and mouth. so, i continued doing theater sets, but i was intimidated by tools and not having enoughtechnical information. i still don't have much.
i always say, i don't have any technique, but of course when you work 50, 60 years, you eventually have a technique. whatever it is. so, this is paper. this was a theater piecescalled paper pieces, which i worked with a brazillian dancer. and, it was shown in the, it was a theater called(mumbles) in new york.
and, what they called newchoreographer's series. and, this was still, there were three eventsin that paper pieces. this was the one about native american. this is. i painted stage floors, 25 by 30 feet, by hand. it was like having a big canvas. it was terrific.
and, that one before, was mother courage. this was antigone, which i had, i'd cut out these anatomy pieces, and four to five (mumbles), somewhat, so the actors could carry them, which they did, and i'd say, carry them like someone that you loved. and, they knew what that was about.
and, this was tartoo from a monier, which i designed thecostumes from bubble wrap by painting on the backof the bubble wrap. and, it really was stupendousunder the theater lights. i designed each of the costumes according to the character. the thing that happened two days before we opened was that the, the paint started comingoff off of the bubble wrap,
because of, again, without tehnique, (laughs) so, we hurried to thehardware store and got all the transparenttape that we could buy. and, we taped on the paint. but, it worked out okay. this was when i worked at york college at the theater there with a very inventive director.
and, this was the piano lesson by august wilson. this was the so-called carved piano which a slave had done. of course, i wasn't gonna carve a piano, and who would do it? but, so i worked with styrofoam, and painted on styrofoam. and, i'm about to doanother one on styrofoam.
and, this was also the, the august wilson piano lesson because in the play,they talk about the curse of the yellow dogs. so, these dogs were, i painted them at night, because i though maybe the director wouldn't like it. and, they were around the apron of the,
of the set, so it was a thrus stage, three sides, so thesedogs went all around. i remember molly went and saw that show. and, this was for colored girls. this was the costumes of the skirts of one of them. and, this was another skirt, of colored girls. this is a piece i workedon with a colleague
of about, no, a minature piece about nostrodomis, a theater piece, and so, she is in those masks, which are made of paper, and her hands and her head, so. after i went back, then i went back to my studio in chelsea, and i started doing installations,
as a smaller version of theater. and, this is one called coming alonge, which is the brazilianword's a long journey. it has several family pictures. it has my mother's legs in it a few times. and, my father's flying in some place, and there are a few houses. this is the 40 pieces put together about what's happening in the world,,
like war, war, or, children sold for wheat. and, other subjects, which maybe, you can read some of them. and, this wasn't an installation. it's a talking piece, which got the name (mumbles), from someone told me that in africa, they, musicians and theater people
carry around a big cloth, which they'd put down in the villages and that's where they perform. so anyway, i created thispiece and kept going. i started the wall piece first, and then, i kept going. and, since then, i'veused it quite a few times for people to talk on. at first, people are inhibited.
they don't want to walk on art. but of course, i was usedto painting the theater stage floor, so it seemed natural to me. but, once people get on this piece, they really start talking. it's a storytelling piece, right? and, or they'd sing a song that their grandmother told them. when you step out of the ordinary world
into some space which you can dream on or remember on, or whatever, then they get active. so, people enjoyed it a lot. this is a piece about refugees. and, it's done on very plain cloth, and with other pieces of cloth put on, and it's a subject that's interested me for many years,
and now, of course, it's about refugees. it's called on the road. here's another one about refugees. it's also done on cloth. and i, on unprimed cloth, which i like the way it stains. this is also on a piece of cloth. and, another version of refugees.
it's called an africa. and, this one's called flight and landing. and, it's about chlld refugees. i don't know if youguys see there are heads of children in among them. for some reason, ithought of putting birds in my paintings. i don't know why. i've never been particularlyinterested in birds.
but once when i was up in lakehill, some cardinals, which is especially a bird i never liked, nested in the bush. i got so involved with them. and when they finally left, you know, my sense of abandonment, which i had very strongly, came up. but, so birds entered in with the car.
with the refugees and the birds. and, this is also about refugees. at the top, you can see the figures, and it's called refugees in roses. this is called walking,walking, walking, walking. also, on refugees. and, this one is called flight. at the bottom, are therefugees and the birds seem to want to be there,
so there they are. and, this is a large painting, which i don't know what happened to it. it's enormous. and it was the first one that i'd done on linen, which is a wonderful thing to paint on. i had no idea. so somehow, it was shown some place
and never got back. but, it's one of my favorite paintings. so at least, i have a good view of it. it's called bird story. yes, my painting's been very influenced about my family life. and, my mother was a very good role model for me, but i didn't know it
until i started painting her. she emerged in my paintings, in many of my paintings and drawings. she was from tennessee. she grew up on a farm with a father who was very mean and very abusive. she milked the cows. she, you know, helped her mother
cook for the laborers, and she had a hard life. but, then she apprenticed herself to a tailor, a russian tailor, and she learned to make. she could make a suit or a coat. and so, she said if you wanted it to not look homemade, you press the inner seams as you go along.
so in my house, it wasalways a big ironing board near the sewing machine, and a pan of water, and a cloth. so, now we'll go back upto the last one, dear. okay, we'll talk a littlebit about this one. because when i was about nine years old, my father had a baby with another woman than my mother, right?
so, this baby became quite the center of our lives because it, it was the end of my family life. so, this baby appears ina lot of my paintings. and, i remember we were driving in my father's old chevrolet going to kansas city, where they worked. and, my father said to my mother, if you'll take the baby,
we'll go to another town and start over. and, i jumped up in the backseat and said, mama, take the baby. and she said, hush, honey. and, she always said that was the worst decision she ever made in her life because the funny thing is, or the strange thing is that, she and that boy, as he grew up,
got closer and closer to my mother. and once, i would neverhad a chance really, but once i went to visit him in the army, hospital where he lived like a big campus. and, i went unexpectedly andhe was crossing the campus, and he had two things in his hand. one was the cardboard box that my mother's ashes had come in. and, the other thing was my eight by 10
theater photo, head shot, right? so anyway, the. let's see, what's the next (laughs)? this is a portrait of my mother. and, i have a friend of many years, a japanese painter. he's not alive now, buthe's japanese, right? he said, that looks just like my mother. so, i guess in a way,it's a universal mother.
but, there's the words,take the baby, mama. and, this is a small piece of my mother. that's a collage of a photoof her is at the bottom. and, there's the word fire. this is another painting of my mother, and the birds got into that one. in fact, joan has that painting. and, these are my mother's shoes. so then, i have a lot ofpaintings about latin america.
because, as peter said,i studied journalism and when i was about 23, i went to latin america. i got a chance to work in venezuela, and later, brazil. and so, i always liked. when i grew up, i hadnever seen a mexican, except someone named doloris del rio, if anyone remembers that actress.
but, i loved mexicansfor some reason as a kid. and, when we played movie stars, i said, dibs on dolores del rio. and, i'd pull my hair back, and so finally, i did go to mexico. but, what intrigued me very much later was the, in chiapas, the rebellionof the zapatistas. i don't know if you knew about that,
where these indians and farmers took over the town hall, and it was such a brave event that it stimulated me, artistically. i think, i always think, well, what we need is, if you're an artist, you have to be brave. that's what it's made of, bravery. and, so is another view of the zapatistas
called la drolsa. and, the men are womenwere in that, by the way. this a family view of, a brazilian family in the north. this is another version. i made many versions of this family. it was from an article that these farmers had been convinced to start growing sisal, and it had,
and so they had. sisal is a crop that takes over the land, and you can't reallyplant anything else there. so, i was intrigued. well, i lived, you know, quite a few years in brazil and venezuela, and my job as a journalist was to travel around in these villages and farm areas and interview families.
and, i was a young woman then, but i knew enough spanish and it was easy. i'd go sometimes by myself. they had wood buring trains and buses. i remember once on a bus,there was a downpour, and so the bus got stuck. one of the wheels gotstuck in the mud hole. so, all the passengersget out and we'd push
the bus out of the thing. but, bus trips were wonderful, because in brazil, someone always has a guitar. and, someone sings, so one doesn't think, think of the hardship of those roads, which were very, very bad. i'm just showing this because it's
one of my favorite, one of my favorite paintings, or collages, also done on cloth. and, when i was in (mumbles) once, someone came up to me, this guy, and said, are you henrietta mantooth? he knew that i had been to mexico, so he told me this story. he was a writer.
he's a very good writer. and, he said that he had worked as a waiter in a mexican restaurant. and then, he got the job of being the head, the supervisor there. so, he became friendswith all this illegal, with all these illegal immigrants who were waiters, from mexico. they couldn't go back to their families
because they've come in illegally and so, he said to them, i'll go to your village and take messages and take whatever you want to send, gifts and so forth. so, he went to mexico, and he had to take a couple of buses to get to the place. at the final one was pretty,
over a dusty road. and so, he's in this bus, and there's a littlekid sitting next to him. this guy is pink, and everyone else was brown. anyway, this little kidkeeps looking at him and finally my friend, whoknew a little spanish said, que pasa? and, the kid said, nada, nada.
and so, when he got to the village, he saw all these family members, and it was the first gringothat they'd ever seen. so, this painting is called first gringo. que pasa, right? so, that's the only. i had sold that to someone who went to malaysia, who had a business in malaysia.
and at that time, there was, the big, they were arresting gay men in malaysia and it was against the law and all that. and, this guy was gay. my friend's gay, and i thought great, he's going to malaysia and the guy's gonna be put up in the office. so, this is just an idea of men.
i want to do a whole series. i had done a series about men. it's called men making decisions. actually, i didn't mean it this way, but it looks as if they'restanding up peeing. and, this is another one of men. it's called status quo. and, i think. what?
- [voiceover] yay! - okay, this. i had an accident about 2011, which i had to do three surgeries, right? so, i'm in the hospital, and then, in rehab and so forth. and when i come out, i have to say, joan mitchell. i was in a project with joan mitchell
where they were trying to save the work of older artists, right? it was called called. and, so while i was in the hospital, this archivist, who was doing my work, went ahead working with me. i wasn't there, but working with my thing. and, one thing she told me isyou've got to sign your work, otherwise, it has no value.
so, she got me to sign my work. anyway, when i came back to my studio after all that surgery and rehab, there she was, working my studio. and, i tell you, the doctors put me together physically, but the joan mitchell foundation put me together artistically. and, so when i first started painting,
i started painting cars. i've never been interested in cars. i guess i'm still not, in certain ways, except their colors. but, i didn't question myself. that's one thing about a catastrophe. when you get over it, you don't question. you accept whatever comes.
so, i accepted cars. and, i sent some to an exhibit and a woman had just opened a gallery in (mumbles), saw them and said, oh, i wish you would do. i opened a new gallery. would you do the window on the street with these cars?
so, i did it and i actuallylike it quite a bit. and, i learned a lot. and, i experimented a lot. and, people had so muchfun with that show. this going along with three people were taking photographs. and so, i guess cars isa good subject, right? yeah, this was one of my cars. and, the bird insistedon being in that one too.
now, this is the latesttwo shows that i've done. it has to do with the us prison system, of which it is so racially oriented, so corrupt, so horrible, so mean, and so money making, that we really have topay attention to it. so at first, i did a show and i was having a one person show in woodstock, new york, in an enormous gallery.
and so, it had a stage really, at one end of it. and so, i didn't. i did this installationabout the us prison system using birds. i called it jail birdsand the new jim crow. and, it. it was wonderful to work on. first, i worked on foundpieces of cardboard,
because i like ordinary materials. and, this i used things that were happening, like conjugal visits are being curtailed. that was one of them. and, it was quite amazinghow many people came. i organized one saturday something called a prison panel, in which four people who worked or volunteered in prisons
spoke, and i rememberthinking in the morning, nobody's gonna come to this. it was packed. and, the fifth person on the panel was an ex-imate, who had learned modern dance from a volunteer in prison. and, that had really change, saved his life. and so, he was the fifth one who spoke
on the panel, and then, heperformed on the installation. there's, he. this is one that was in the window of the installation that i subsequentally had in catskill. they asked me if i'd do it there because they were doing a two, a big two county program on justice, so they asked me
if i'd take the show there. it changed a lot, the show, which has to be. i like that. and, this was in the window on the sidewalk calleddriving while black. this was from theoriginal one in woodstock. it was. and, here is the dancer on that piece.
this was part of the woodstock show. and, this was a closeup of that. is that all? - [voiceover] yes it is. - okay. i have some other things to say, though. as a young journalist, i got the chance to go to venezuela, and i just got a job withpan american airlines.
but, then they opened a new program, which was based on thefarm administration program they did in the south to help small farm in the us. it helped small farmersand to give loans to them. technical, agricultural,and home, and nutrition. anyway, they started aprogram like that in brazil. and, i was so lucky. they gave me the job of going around,
and interviewing these families. you know, it was just like home to me because i grew up with poor people during the depression, so it wasn't, you know, i didn't have to change any of my feeligs. that was the main thing. so, i did a lot of that work, and then, they sent me to brazil.
so, on just a temporary job, doing the same thing. and there, i met my future husband. and, i got married there. and so, my boss, from new york, came down to be with us at the wedding and he said, look, i'llgive you a permanent job in brazil, but you have to agreeto take off two months
to adjust to marriage. i thought, i was so indignant. i said, what about him? but i tell you, thosetwo months were great, because the way i adjusted to marriage, i discovered, because i hadn't done art in all those years. i adjusted to marriage by going to three times a week
to a night drawing groupfrom the model, right? and so, i had those two months. i got, immediately, i hung the drawing, and i'm back into art. because as a kid, that's what i did. that's what we did all the time. i was always the class artist. but, i had left that because i had to make a living.
i liked to write. i wanted to be a poet, buti knew i couldn't do that, so i went to journalism. i went to this university. and, i realized afterwards, how much had learned there. i really learned to write, to edit, to do. we put out the town paper. the students put out thetown paper in missouri.
so, anyway, i'm back to drawing from the model, right? and, i was back to art. there was no going back from, those two months of adjustment was a real adjustment for me. so then, my husband and i took a vacation to europe. he had been there quite a lot.
he was a foreigncorrespondent during the war, but i had never been to europe. so, we had two weeks and then, i decided to stay an extra week. and, i said to thisfriend of mine in rome, how should i spend this week? he said, go to florence. and i said, i'm 28 years old. i said, what's in florence?
so, you people who startyour career at seven. at 28, i went to florence. i said, what's there? he said, nevermind, i'll make you a list. what a list, you know. masaccio, frangelico, brunelleschi. donatello. i named my second son from that statue
with the hat and the curls. and, so i was hooked, totally hooked. when i went back to brazil, after a while, i took a leave of absence from my job, and from my marriage. and, i spent seven months in europe, where i just drew, paint, traveled around with a paint box, well, that's what happened.
and fortunately, i think, my husband caught on to what i was doing. and when i called, we had agreed that i go for four months. and so, when i called him from florence and said, (mumbles) i can't come back now. it's not like just being on a string. i haven't finished what i wanted to do. he said, you know, forgetabout the marriage.
so, but my letters in those days, it was slow mail, right? and, he kept getting my letters. so, it saved the marriage, right? i mean, the marriagesurvived the separation. and then, we had our two sons, and we were married for 43 years until he died. so, peter i have to say this.
i didn't bring in an illustration. but, when peter was nico's age, 21, he was my model. he was the greatest model. he was a student at sva, right? and so, he posed for me. we had such a connection that he would know exactly what pose would turn me on to.
so, you know, and then finally, he had left and did more. put his clothes on and left. okay, that's about it. - betty, joan, henrietta, thank you so much. that was so wonderful. and also, very, verymoving on so many levels. we'd like to, because it'salready a little bit past eight,
we'd like to turn it over to questions from the audience. and, there's already a hand up there. so, let's. another great artist, mary frank. - [voiceover] i just wannasay it's really moving to hear people talk about their work. and what i really, can you hear?
yeah? what i really love iswhen it's the connection with the world, and it's not because i work figuratively. i mean, i love a lot of abstract work. but, i love the sense when you talk about the past,the present, the future. women. but, it's women in the world.
it's not just women, you know, completely alone or even ina very good organization. but, i think what's going on now, here, everywhere in the world with race, with war, with very crazyand dangerous people running for president, of course, you know who i mean. trump, of course. but, it's just so important
to hear people talking about work that, where they'retalking about connection to their own lives, but also, it becomes universal. so, it's really not a question. thank you. - i just wanted to say one thing that i had written down,but i didn't follow my notes since it's dark in here.
but, when i came back to new york, i found, that was in the 60s, i found the atmospherewhich joan spoke about, and which still exists. but, i wanted to say that i had read an interview with mary frank when i was in brazil, and i said, if i ever, when i get to new york, i'm gonna look her up, but i didn't.
but, a friend came over once and said, i'm going to have dinnerat someone's house, would you like to go? who? mary frank. and so, we became friends. but, i want to say notonly mary, but joan, had gone out of their way to help me, show my work, to give,
references, and i want to thank both of you whilei have this chance. - [voiceover] yes? please speak up, becausethis is just to record. it doesn't actually amplify. - [voiceover] um, thank you very much for your presentations. and, i really love your works. and, my question is,
did you ever feel that society is not prepared to your works,and what would you? like, did you ever feel that the society is not prepared for your works, and how did you deal with that? - well, you know, it'soften been said about me that i was ahead of my time. it's not. it's not a statement i can agree with,
because you can only be of your time. you can be rejected by the society that you're living in, butyou're still of your time. that's the way i think about it. it's nice now to have more acceptance, for sure. - once i had an exhibit of these paintings of brazilian families, and there was a brazilian diplomat who had come to it,
and he said, why do youalways paint poor people? about brazil, right? but, it's because theyweren't covered up, right? i mean, their clotheshad been washed so much that they were like statues. and, they weren't. you know, i still remember these women handing me a little cup of coffee and a piece of.
it was so, welcoming in a human way that, you know, once you have a lot of money and you have a lot of clothes and new shoes, you get covered up. and so, some way you have to get naked again, right? - [voiceover] other questions? - [voiceover] my question is for betty.
i noticed that a lot of your imagery was black and white, butthen, in some of your language-based work, you were using color. so, i was curious as to whether, as to what that blackand white means for you? was it merely a productof the type of media from which you were sourcing your imagery, or was there a more conscious reason you chose to work in black and white?
- when i first startedthem, from 1969 to 76, i lived in a black and white world. i had a black and white television. my camera shot black and white film. everything was black and white. and, i wanted, that wasa conscious decision not to inject color into the source photos that i used. when i started in again,
i make my own black, so to me, the paintings are full of color, i've often, and i have done paintings that are in color. i just didn't show any of them. and, one of the thingsthat i've been doing for the last couple of years is that i put an undercoat of color underneath so that when i spray
the chromatic black andthe white on top of it, that color really influences the way we see it. i'm taking advantage of acrylic paint's natural tendency to beslightly transparent, especially when pushedthrough an airbrush. but, i do work in color often, and i think about color all of the time. - [voiceover] thank you.
- you're welcome. - [voiceover] i had a question for joan. what is your relation tothe grid in your paintings versus the more gestural stroke and how that's evolved throughoutyour painting practice? - it's a long answer, but. i think it began because early on, i liked the idea of a narrative. and, one of the things i was doing
was teaching children. as a young artist, i wouldgo into public schools and work with kids doing art. and often, i would see lined paper. and, i mean, i have a memory of that being kind of influencing me. the other thing thatinfluenced me at one point was i was working in myloft on mulberry street and the bottom part of thewall had a tongue and groove
white wood, and at one point, i was painting and i looked down at this tongue and groove white that was splattered with paint, you know, very delicate paint drops from when i was painting. and, i looked at that, and i said, that's what i want mypaintings to look like. you know, and that really was a moment,
you know, sort of looking down and seeing this white stripes andthe paint drips on it. i don't know. i mean for me, it's order. it's about achieving somekind of order in a painting. it's. i always liked the idea of music. i listen to a lot of musicand music influences me, i think more than art does really.
i always liked my paintings to have many different parts and sections, like a symphony might. you know, a happy section. a tragic section. you know, strange, myster, you know. not just something simple. i mean, you know. i don't think i could make a really,
a simple painting. so, you know, and then there's the idea of destroying the grid. once you're using it, then you can try an destroy it in different ways and loosen it up, or. i've always played with. i don't think it's unusual. i think a lot of artpeople use the grid, so.
- when i was a kid, wedid all our paper dolls. my sister and i painted our paper dolls on big chief tablets,which was a school tablets. i don't know if any of you have seen them. so, all fo the dolls and their clothes had these blue lines through them. so, i still think it's a good subject. - [voiceover] we have a question here. - [voiceover] i have a little thank you
for you to joan. i remember a time wheni was an art student in india and reading something about you being an artist andwanting to have a child, or something. the work you done afterhaving a child, or something. and, why it was important for you. but, i understand exactly what you meant, and to be a woman and to be, obviously,
a serious painter, which i wanted to be too but i also wanted to have a child. and, it seemed impossible to do that because in the placethat i was growing up, you either went for one or the other. there was, you know. and, so what i wanted to say was a thank you because, for what you all do, it has ripples everywhere.
and, people here and it's, it gives strength and a possibility. i did have a child. and, i do continue to paint. yes, i do both, yes. - [voiceover] any other questions? yes? - leo (laughs). can't wait.
it's leo. - [voiceover] this is a question to joan. - oh, god. - [voiceover] it connectsto mary's question, the lady on my right. or, a remark about the work engaging the world. and, much of your work does that. then on the other hand,
there is what we musicians sometimes, or music historians, refer to as absolute music. abstract, you even talk of, identify some of your paintings as symphonies, which are the sort of, prime specimens of absolute music. and, i just wonder, when do you do one,
and when do you do? what moves you to, to make this shift from time to time? does that make sense? - you mean, a paintingthat has subject matter and a painting that's more abstract? - [voiceover] no, not so much that. referring to some of your work where there's actually language,
which is very referential, not in the sense of subject matter, but makes one think of issues, situations. - i just want everybodyto know how intimidating this is because leo tritler isa world famous musicologist. and, he's asking mequestions about my paintings in reference to music. i don't know, i mean,
i think i can write in a painting and still make a symphony, right? i can write word in a painting that have references to certain things, andstill be making a symphony. it doesn't have to not be a symphony if i'm using words. like, the painting calledbreak into my heart so needy, used the words from that bach song.
those are some of the words from it. but for me, that was likea musical composition. i mean, that piece. so, i don't know. i do think that the work goesback and forth sometimes, you know. it's very corporal or it's body. maybe, it's about thebody or about, you know, personal experiences or things like that.
and then, maybe, i'll make a symphony. and, i don't really have an answer to when i'll make a symphony and when i won't make a symphony. - [voiceover] that's an answer. - thanks, leo. i have a question. and, it's a question that we often like to ask our guests.
what advice would you give young artists with your experience today? - yeah, got it. what i say when i'm asked this question, do honest work. don't work for the market. figure out a way to support yourself, so that you can do honest work. be creative and be true to yourself.
i don't know any other way to do it. - i like what she said. i think young artistshave to give themselves. i used to say eight years. now, i'm down to five, maybe. but, you know, when youget out of graduate school, forget about the galleryscene and all that business, and i think you really have to get out of graduate school and just work
for at least five years on your own. and, you know, develop who you are. find out who you are. you know, how long didit take charlie parker to play like charlie parker. i mean, it just takes a long, long time, and i think that people, you know, the big mistakeis to make it really young. i mean, it's a huge mistake for artists
when they make it young. - i totally agree. - yeah, i mean, it's a disaster. so. it really is. and, galleries create that too because they run aroundto graduate studios and try to figure out who's going to be hot next.
it's not a good thing. i mean, i find that it must be impossible to live in new york city and try to be an artist, you know. affording a studio and an apartment and everything else. so, you know, one of the first things you could think about is moving out of new york city.
and, maybe working forfive years some place else. anyway, i could go on and on. i'm kind of a jewish mother. but, yeah, yeah. - i would say don't think, just trust your hand, and keep it moving. it's like being an actor. just get on stage as much as you can.
and, trust your hands. you trust it. and, you can discoverwhat your hand's doing. otherwise, you wouldn't know. right? it just has its own way. - [voiceover] thank you very much.
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